


If I Can Remember

by TrinNeedsTWS



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:07:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23091571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrinNeedsTWS/pseuds/TrinNeedsTWS
Summary: Sara has to deal with an anachronism involving her pre-assassin self.
Relationships: Sara Lance/Ava Sharpe
Comments: 2
Kudos: 96





	If I Can Remember

**Author's Note:**

> So I love the whole, finding out something you're not supposed to, loved ones sharing memories.  
> Like in the Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover when they were all in old memories. That kinda stuff. I also love Sara and Ava and the whole team and honestly Legends is the best.

The muscles beside her spine twitched when I traced one of the thick scars running perpendicular to it.  
For the millionth time, I wondered where she had got them.  
“Ava,” she murmured warningly, almost playfully.  
Though I admired her ability to be immediately alert at any moment, it also prevented me from seeing her asleep, no matter how adorable. She always sensed me.  
“How did you learn how to do that?” I murmured teasingly, pressing a kiss to her neck as I lay back down.  
“Everyone knows how. You just have to start paying attention,” Sara said, half-conscious.  
That only half made sense, but it didn’t really need to make sense as this time of morning.  
She rolled over onto her side, bare skin unmarred, for the most part: she had less vicious scarring on her front. I spared a moment to admire the muscular planes of her hips before I accepted the hand she was offering me. Sara’s palms were rough, decorated with calluses and tiny white nicks and scars. Running my fingers over the tougher regions on her palm, I watched her eyes flutter back closed.  
“Tired?” I asked, shifting closer to her.  
Affirmatively, she hummed. “Nightmare.”  
“Again?”  
“Yeah. It’s okay. It doesn’t happen very often. Might leave the anachronisms to the Bureau today though,” she said, blearily.  
“That bad, hey?” I said, gently teasing.  
It won me a soft, weary laugh.  
We dozed for a while longer, letting Sara try and sleep off her exhaustion.  
“Sorry to interrupt, Captain, but Nate is requesting your presence in the bridge,” Gideon announced over the PA.  
“Tell him I’m sleeping,” Sara responded, burying her face in my neck.  
“Certainly, Captain.”  
We had five more minutes before someone pounded on the door.  
“Tell him to go away!” groaned Sara.  
Instead, the door hissed open, revealing Nate.  
Luckily, I was wearing an oversized sleep shirt—though Sara was not. She wrenched the covers onto her chest as she bolted upright.  
“Nate, I swear to God, this better be life or death, or I’m gonna kick your ass, naked or not."  
Nate had the good sense to look mildly sheepish.  
“Sorry, Sara.”  
“What is it?”  
“I just thought you might want to know there’s an anachronism involving your younger self,” he said, nervously.  
“Gideon, what age am I? Because if I’m a teenager, I’m leaving that punk wherever she is for a little while. Knock some fucking sense into her,” Sara said, tiredly.  
I don’t know how she managed to be fierce and terrifying while naked and vulnerable in her own safe space.  
“I believe this Sara is not a teenager, but a version from Lian Yu, if I have calculated the dates correctly,” Gideon informed her.  
I’m not sure if Nate missed the tensing of Sara’s shoulders, the infinitesimal tightening of her jaw.  
“Okay, Nate. I’ll handle it. Thank you,” she said curtly to him.  
As soon as the doors closed, Sara stood, parting her hair with her fingers and beginning to braid it as she surveyed her weapons, still completely naked except for her underwear.  
“Sara,” I said, gingerly as she tied off one of the braids and started on the next.  
“Ava, I’ll handle it. I need you to stay here and look after the Waverider while I’m gone."  
Scrutinising her scarred back, I said nothing, wondering how many of those scars had come from that godforsaken island in the middle of a cold sea.  
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I cautioned.  
She finished her hair and put on a sports bra and deodorant.  
“I can’t…if it’s me from Lian Yu, I can’t afford to fuck it up, Ava. I need to put me back exactly where I left the timeline. My being there is crucial—to becoming me, and to Oliver becoming Oliver, and to Slade becoming Slade, and whole heap of other stuff.”  
“Slade?” I asked. “Oliver?”  
“They’re just…I can’t fuck this up. I don’t want this to be a mess like the others,” she said, as she pulled on cargo pants and harnesses and sheaths for her weapons.  
“Then let me help you,” I suggested.  
She shook her head. “Not this time. I’m sorry.”  
Her fingers fumbled on the zipper of her jacket.  
“I’m leaving you in charge,” Sara said.  
I nodded, and she left.  
No fucking way was I leaving her to deal with this alone. I knew she wouldn’t leave immediately—she would eat and clean her teeth. Low blood sugar wouldn’t do her any favours and she knew it.  
Immediately after getting dressed and cleaning myself up, I went to Ray’s lab, where he was tinkering with a gun he had made.  
“I need your help,” I said.  
“Oh, Ava, hi. Yeah, anything you need!” he said cheerfully.  
“I need you to get me onto the jump ship without Sara knowing,” I said.  
Frowning, he responded, “Won’t she be mad?”  
“Very. But I’m not letting her do it alone.”  
He appraised me for a moment before leaving to get his suit.  
Impatiently, I waited for him to return. When he did, we trotted onto the jump ship and he used his shrink-ray on me.  
“That shouldn’t last very long,” he told me, and wished me luck.  
I waved a tiny hand as he left, though I knew he couldn’t see me.  
Only a few minutes passed before Sara entered the jump-ship, tucking her dagger into the sheath on her lower back. When the jump ship launched I stumbled but managed to stay on my feet as Sara navigated it into landing. When she was satisfied, Sara undid her seatbelt and stole out of the door, scanning and calculating as she took in her new surroundings.  
As she did so, I embiggened.  
"Ava! What are you doing here?" Sara whisper-screamed at me as I stepped out of the jump ship behind her.  
The shields shimmered, hiding it from view--though the chances of someone finding it in the middle of this rooftop in this town of 1934 were unlikely anyway.  
My girlfriend was crouching, scrutinising the street below.  
"I'm here to help you," I said, as if it were obvious.  
"I told you, I don't need your help," she snarled quietly.  
"You're getting it anyway," I said calmly.  
I knew that she was only being so resistant because something was bothering her; though I couldn't guess what, I knew her jabs weren't really directed at me.  
Discretely, she pointed at a bar below us on the street. "She's in there," Sara informed me.  
"Okay. Tell me the plan," I prompted.  
Her shoulder's rose in a steadying breath. "I'm gonna go in there, grab her, and drag her back here."  
"Shouldn't you be more gentle?"  
"I won't hurt her. I just want it to be quick."  
I nodded. "Call if you need me."  
She acknowledged me with a jerk of her head before she spun around to traverse the stairs down. I watched her dart across the street and into the bar. Only minutes later, she returned, her hand wrapped around the upper arm of her younger self as she hurried them back to the building.  
When Sara mounted the top stair to the roof and urged her younger self over, I understood, all at once, why she had wanted this to be a solo task. I had seen photos of her from her past: accidental captures during League missions, her face forbidding as just another person in the background, security footage of the Canary, pictures of her younger self before any of this happened. But no records existed of the period of her life during Lian Yu, before the League. Her early-twenties self was gaunt, emancipated. Her hair was tied behind her head, only to keep it off her tired, grubby face. Her clothes were loose on her hips and shoulders, and worn, and her boots were splattered with constant use. Starving, abused and alone. She appraised me, swiftly, carefully, searching my face as if looking for something. Sadly, I smiled at her.  
My Sara didn't meet my eyes as she gestured for me to enter the jump ship. I opened it up, and young Sara's exhausted expression flickered in shock, but she was too weak to resist as my Sara encouraged her forward.  
I sat in the pilot seat as Sara strapped her passenger in. Her hands were efficient and gentle.  
"I'm really sorry about this," I heard her murmur.  
"I understand," her doppelganger replied.  
Reluctantly, Sara came to sit in the seat beside me. "Gideon, Lian Yu, please. Whatever moment she was displaced from," she ordered.  
“Unfortunately, Captain, it is impossible for me to determine when she was displaced from. If my understanding is correct, it is imperative that it is as close to the exact moment, and I can’t get closer than a few months,” Gideon said, reluctantly.  
Sara was quiet and frozen for a few moments before unbuckling her seat and going behind me to talk to her younger self.  
“Are you okay?” she asked.  
Twisting against my belt, I stared over the chair to watch as pre-assassin Sara shrugged and nodded tiredly. “As well as I can be.”  
“I need you to tell me what you remember from the last few days.”  
“I…sometimes it’s not quite there,” she admitted.  
“I know it isn’t. Just tell me what you do remember. Anything—the smallest details matter.”  
Young Sara shook her head, mildly alarmed. “I…the Amazo went down. I found Slade’s mask and brought it to shore with me, though I only remember the swim. I think Ollie killed him, but I searched for his body and I couldn’t find it. I don’t know where Ollie went, he didn’t go with the others when they escaped, but I didn’t see them escape, so maybe he didn’t…. it’s been maybe three weeks since the food ran out. Pieces of the freighter have been washing up on the shore, and I pulled some of them back with me and made more traps.”  
“Wait, how long ago was that?” My Sara said, urgently.  
“I don’t know? I’ve been passing out a bit and stuff, losing time. I made trip blades…maybe two days ago?”  
“Thank you,” Sara whispered, and came to the console, tapping rapidly on it before strapping herself back in.  
We landed on a stony beach that suddenly shifted to forest a few yards away. Off the shore, there was a sunken, halved freighter. Sara gazed at it for a moment too long for it to be just any boat, though she shook her head roughly and went to get her younger self up. While she did so, I exited the ship. At once, I noticed the piece of driftwood stuck upright in the sand, an orange and black mask with a feathered arrow stuck through the right eye hanging from it. I stared at it, and young Sara cleared her throat behind me.  
"Slade Wilson's," she explained.  
I looked at my Sara. Her face was solemn, betraying nothing.  
"Come on," she said, indicating the forest.  
My Sara led, a pace in front of her past self, while I watched them both from behind. After I almost hit a tree branch for the third time, I asked, “can’t we use the path?”  
“No. It’s booby trapped,” they replied in unison.  
Frowning, I ducked another branch and let them lead me. I had no idea where we were, but both of them were confident in their turns. Eventually, we came to a clearing, with a crashed plane at the far end, overtaken with vines and weeds. The field was covered in debris—exploded outward from the plane.  
“Stay here. Keep watch,” Sara told me, and warily approached the vessel.  
Anxiously gazing after them, I waited impatiently for her return. When she did a few minutes later, her past self did not follow.  
“I flashed her, then knocked her out,” my girlfriend confirmed, gripping my wrist to tug me into movement.  
“Sara—” I began, letting her drag me back into the trees.  
“Not now, okay? Let’s get out of this place.”  
Her brisk walk was close to a run, but she didn’t actually break into one. I allowed myself to be coaxed into the skittish pace she set, and it took half the time to reach the beach.  
Sara didn’t spare a glance for the broken freighter or the eerie, ripped mask as she closed the door behind us and strapped herself in.  
“Gideon, take me home,” Sara said, rubbing her face.  
“Of course, Captain.”  
Closing her eyes, the ex-assassin didn’t open them until the ship was locked back into its bay. As soon as it did, she was bolting back onto the Waverider, though she tried hard to look casual. At a more controlled pace, I went to the galley, where I knew the rest of the Legends would be eating dinner by now.  
“Hey, Mrs Cap’n,” Nate greeted me.  
“How’d the anachronism go?” Ray asked, pulling the butter towards him and away from Mick.  
“It’s fine. Younger Sara is back where she belongs,” I told them.  
“And how’s our Sara?” Zari asked, knowingly.  
When I failed to answer for a strange amount of time, Gideon piped up, “Sara has used a time courier to return to Star City, 2018.”  
“What? Why?” I asked, dumbfounded.  
“To visit,” Gideon replied simply.  
All of us exchanged puzzled glances. That was concerning, because although I shared a bed and many other things with Sara, her team knew much more about her habits than I did at this point in our relationship.  
“Does she do that often?” Zari said, now pulling her ever-present tablet toward her and opening something.  
“Relatively, though I would not recommend going after her,” Gideon said.  
“Can you take us to Star City?” Zari inquired, typing something.  
“Of course.”  
It was a short jump from the temporal zone to 2018, so none of us bothered to strap in, though Mick did slide off his chair in his buzzed state. Ray and I followed Zari to the bridge, as she still fiddled with her tablet. A few minutes passed where I was trying to work out what she was doing, before she made a 'ha' noise, and swiped up on her screen, moving whatever it was onto the larger one on the bridge. From what I could tell, it was security footage.  
“Is this live?” Ray asked, frowning.  
“Sure is,” Zari said, self-satisfied.  
Cocking my head, I stepped closer to the screen, trying to work out why Zari had done it. It was a black-and-white feed, and as soon as saw the blank, barred hallways, I realised.  
“Is this a prison?”  
“Oh, yeah. Supermax Stateside, to be exact.”  
“Where Oliver is being held,” Ray said, a grim note of realisation in his tone.  
“That is correct, Raymond,” Zari smirked, and tapped her screen again.  
She had enlarged one of the camera’s feeds.  
It was of one of the rooms where prisoners were allowed to meet people through glass and phones. Most of the booths were full, and in one of them sat Oliver Queen, with Sara sitting on the other side of the glass.  
“He looks terrible,” Ray observed quietly.  
He did: even through the not-so-great colouring of the feed, I could see bruising and cuts all over his face as he spoke to Sara.  
“Why’d she go see him?” I asked.  
Zari shook her head. “These cameras don’t have audio. I couldn’t tell you.”  
“That’s okay. Thank you, Zari.”  
“No problem. I was curious as well.”  
I stared at my girlfriend on the screen before turning and striding away.  
*****  
The decision to visit Star City was impulsive. As I wrote my name down in the prison log and followed the guard’s directions, I thought about turning back. This was the city I loved. This was the city my sister had loved and died protecting, in this very prison. So instead of time-jumping back to the ship, I sat down and waited.  
When they brought Oliver from the depths of the prison, I blinked. I had seen my friend in many states of pain and beating, but it was still a surprise to see his bruised and bloody face. Heavily, he sat down across from me, expression changing from closed and forbidding to open and confused as he saw me.  
I picked up the phone. “Hi, Ollie,” I said.  
He picked up his. “Hey, Sara. Didn’t expect to see you here.”  
Dryly, I laughed. “It was an impulse decision.”  
“Is something wrong?”  
That’s what I loved about him. He didn’t need to reunite, affirm that we were still friends. He was there, and steady, like always, despite suffering whatever new hell that was this prison.  
“Kind of. I wanted to…ask your advice on something,” I said, fidgeting with my rings.  
Shifting, he leaned closer to the glass separating us. “Anything.”  
“So…I found a girl. And she’s the only woman I’ve ever met who can almost match me in a fight,” I began, smiling reluctantly.  
“Impressive,” he commented, encouraging me to go on with a tiny, Oliver-trademarked smile.  
“And, this morning, I had to deal with an anachronism that involved my past self. From Lian Yu—the me from after you left, when I was starving and alone on the island before Nyssa found me. And this girl came with me, and she saw it, even though I didn’t want her to,” I explained.  
“You want me to tell you how to be in a relationship and live with the scars. How to tell her everything you went through,” Oliver guessed.  
“Yeah,” I said, uncomfortably.  
“Look, Sara. It’s going to be super hard. Even Felicity doesn’t know some of my worse stories. But she knows all of the good ones, the childhood ones,” Ollie said, gently.  
“So…start off with the stuff that’s small and easy, but still makes me vulnerable?” I asked.  
He nodded. “If you really think she’s the one, keep pushing it. If she asks, choose to answer. You can open yourself up—you don’t have to be alone if you don’t want to. But trust me, no one wants a partner that won’t share or talk, especially when they don’t even try to,” he continued.  
“That’s…actually really helpful. Thank you.”  
He laughed. “I’ve spent six years learning it. Don’t make my mistakes,” he advised.  
I nodded. “Are you okay? Didn’t they put you in protective custody?” I said.  
His face hardened. “No. Don’t worry about me, Sara. I’ve had worse.”  
I eyed him. He was right, I’d seen him worse. I knew he’d be fine.  
“Have you seen Felicity?”  
“No. She’s in ARGUS protective custody. I don’t know where she is,” he said.  
That was the hardest part, for him. Being away from his wife and son.  
“Could I visit them?”  
Surprised, he scrutinised me. “If you wanted. Don’t tell them I’m being beaten up, though. They don’t need that.”  
“Okay.”  
Suddenly, the guard behind Oliver jerked his head. “Come on, Queen. Time’s up.”  
Oliver’s eyes told me goodbye as the guard put his cuffs back on and shepherded him away.  
******  
When Sara returned, she came to the galley, where I was making chicken. Or, Gideon was, rather.  
“Hey, you,” I said, gingerly.  
Sara didn’t say a word as she trudged over to me and hugged me, her palms ending up flat against my back. Surprised, I hugged her back. Her breath was warm as she sighed into my collarbone.  
“I’m really sorry about today,” she apologised, quietly.  
“That’s okay. I probably shouldn’t have pushed it. You had it handled,” I acquiesced.  
“I did,” she admitted.  
She didn’t let go of me. I wasn’t complaining, but she usually wasn’t this touchy in the more public areas of the ship.  
“Everything okay?”  
She didn’t answer, instead she dragged in my scent and held me tighter. Another minute passed before I felt her shoulders tense.  
“I didn’t want you to come with me, because the months I was on my own on the island were the worst of my life. By the time Nyssa found me, I could barely move. I knew I was going to die. And I knew making her go back there would be so hard. I didn’t want you to see it,” she confessed, finally.  
“I know,” I simply said. “Thank you.”  
Her breath shuddered out once more before she released me.  
“I do have a question, though,” I said.  
She gestured for me to continue as she pulled a cup down from one of the cupboards.  
“I read a lot of your file; I know some of what happened to you in the League and everything, but I know nothing about Lian Yu,” I said.  
She raised an eyebrow, asking for my point.  
“Am I ever going to find out?”  
A bitter laugh. “Some of it, yes. Maybe even most of it.”  
I left it at that as she fabricated a bottle of Russian vodka and poured herself a shot.  
“When Oliver first started his ‘crusade’ the only possessions he brought back from his missing five years were in a wooden trunk,” she said, before swallowing the shot. “He kept the trunk in the bunker where we trained. On hard nights, he used to take out the vodka he’d gotten from the Bratva and drink from it.”  
“Is that why you went to go see him?” I asked, as she poured another and drank that too.  
Rolling her eyes at the fact that I knew, she shook her head. “No. I went to go see him because he’s the only person I know who survived that place and is now also married—with a kid, at that.”  
Dumbstruck for a moment, I didn’t reply before she continued.  
“When he came back—I wasn’t there, obviously—but Thea told me he was a shell; he never spoke, was always lying about where he’d been and what he’d been doing. When he met Felicity…it basically all changed. Forced him out. Forced him to be better. I just wanted to ask him how he did it.”  
“You…visited Oliver Queen in prison to ask for relationship advice?” I spluttered.  
Self-consciously, she shrugged as she stood, still holding her now capped bottle of vodka.  
“Are you staying?” she said, as she was about to leave the galley.  
“Do you want me to?”  
There it was—that flirting, goading smirk, tossed over her shoulder as she sauntered away.

**Author's Note:**

> I love talking about the Arrowverse and sharing theories and complaints! No one I know IRL watches it so I have no one to talk to :( Find me on Twitter (same handle) if you wanna talk/be friends! I would love it.  
> Hope you enjoyed! Leave Kudos if you like, please :)


End file.
